You obviously haven't spent very much time using proprietary Unices.
I'm using Solaris, FreeBSD and Slackware.
So, no offense, but at least based on my own experience, I'd have to say that the claim that GNU tools are all dependent on the GNU C library is complete bullshit.
I didn't say "GNU tools", I said "GNU software". Try compiling Gnome on FreeBSD without glibc. The older GNU software will compile just fine, but some of the new stuff is rubbish when it comes to portability.
Remove all the GNU tools and libraries from a stock Linux system, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a single-user shell, let alone/sbin/init.
Remove all the BSD code from a stock Linux system, including the much touted Debian GNU/Linux, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a/sbin/init, let alone a boot.
"You have missed a crucial philosophical point: For everyone to have "freedom", you as an individual must give up a little of your "freedom".
Freedom is the absense of restrictions, true. But you fail to fully comprehend what that means. Freedom is not that condition where anyone can do whatever they want. That is known as nihilism. Rather, it is that condition where anyone can do whatever they want, so long as they do not restrict others from doing the same. The common saying that "your freedom ends where my nose begins" fails to note that your striking my nose restricts my freedom.
Unfortunately, too many people get all muddled headed about software. Despite recent abuses to IP law, the fact remains that software is property. Freedom means that I can't restrict what you do with your code just as you can't restrict what I do with mine. When RMS talks about software freedoms, he is really referring to permissions. Certainly GPLd software gives out more permissions than the Microsoft EULA does, but that makes no difference to freedom one way or another. Closed source software is every bit as free as open source, in reference to to owners of the software. No one's rights or properties are being restricted by closed source software.
If you choose to open the code to everyone, you should be empowered to do that. If you choose to close the source, you should have just as much right to do so.
Bingo! Now you got it!
BSD style protect is still "free" but doesn't offer the right kind of "freedom".
Oops. You just lost it again. You need to get off of the notion that software licenses have anything to do with freedom. Saying that the BSDL doesn't have the "right kind of freedom" is just plain inflammatory.
"em>This [BSD] has the important implication that someday, the project may pull all of the code to close source"
Not at all! What hat did you pull this out of. Once you have given the users the permission to do whatever they want with your software, you can't take it back. No way, no how. Sure, future releases might be closed source, but there's no way that affects the present. Why is it that GPL advocates always fear a BSD author might possibly close their source up in the future, but they never worry about GPL authors doing the same?
You've hit the nail on the head. When RMS talks about "free" and "freedom", he is using a different definition than you or I. It's almost like he's using an orwellian GNUspeak. It is absolutely ridiculous to portray users of closed source software as being enslaved, dominated or subjugated, yet that is precisely how RMS portrays them.
I have heard on too numerous occasions, that one has to restrict freedom in order to protect it, and that's what the GPL is, restrictions on freedom to protect free software. They use spurious analogies like "if there were no restrictions to freedom, then people would be free to murder", or the classic "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose", indicating that they have absolutely no clue what freedom is to begin with.
Open Source software has nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with defining property rights so that people can excercise the freedoms they already possess.
I should have clarified. They didn't change ls, grep, more or anything like that. But they did change libc. And they did take stuff and "tune" it for Linux. But the biggest contributors to the LinuxOS as an OS were the distributions. And they used software from a variety of sources, not just GNU. Take out the stuff from BSD and none of the Linux distros will work.
The point is, no one took an existing GNU System and dropped the Linux kernel inside. That's because there was no GNU System at that time.
What makes GNU tools the defacto standard when none of the other equivalents use their "extensions"? If they were the standard, the others would add those additional options.
Example, the GNU automake/autoconf generates makefiles that are only usable with gmake. Example, shell scripts from GNU are invariably designed for bash and not generic sh. Example, most GNU software requires the extensions in glibc, and will not work with any other C library. GNU could easily make their stuff work seamlessly with any Unix whatsoever, but they choose not to. Microsoft could learn quite a bit from the FSF when it comes to embrace and extend.
The BSD ls is not GNU ls. Nothing in their core userland is from GNU.
But what are you really saying? That the existance of GNU ls in Linux requires that the whole be called GNU/Linux? That's just stupid.
Even RMS has publically stated that mere use of the GNU tools, even using *all* of them, does not require an OS to be called GNU. His argument is different, in that he considers Redhat, SuSE, Slackware to *ACTUALLY BE* the GNU System. But his argument only makes sense if distributions took the existing GNU System and swapped out the unworking kernel with Linux. This is not what happened.
From the article: The result, although commonly referred to as "Linux," is the GNU System
When is RMS going to shrug off this delusion of his? It was Linus and Company that fixed the GNU software to run under Linux, not the other way around. It's pretty arrogant to incorporate Linus' fixes into GNU then demand that Linux be called GNU as a result.
Take all the non-GNU stuff out of Redhat, SuSE or Debian, but keep the kernel, and see if it will even boot, let alone be usable.
Linux does not require the vast majority of GNU software. 95% of userland can be cleanly replaced by non-GNU alternatives. In fact, the only things required from GNU are glibc and gcc. It's pretty uppity to require users of a compiler and library to call their results GNU.
Socialist: One who advocates the state ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. This has nothing to do with individual freedoms, and is in most cases antagonistic to them.
Information, including websites, are still economic products. To advocate that the state be in charge of them is to advocate against individual webmasters being in charge of their own creations.
So long as the individual can be allied with in the fight against capitalism, the socialist will proclaim his love for individual freedoms. But once the capitalist enemy is no more, their designs inevitably turn towards those not of the collective mind.
Re:Backward compatibility
on
GUADEC Reports
·
· Score: 2
No, Qt 2.x is not backwardly compatible to 1.x. But they have managed to achieve a level of backwards compatibility that is still very good. All of the 2.x releases will work together. The 2.1 beta is out and it works just fine with 2.0. No recompiles necessary.
Compare this to the Windows world where every program comes with yet another copy of the MFC, VB or DX runtimes because the compatibility gets lost from month to month.
When I'm in hackermode, I use elvis 'cause it doesn't try to shove ideology down my throat. But ocassionally there comes the time when I need to massive, bloated and overloaded monstrosity to edit a memo and do my dishes simultaneously. When that time comes I don't use emacs. Instead I turn to XEmacs! Just a big, but copyrighted by a defunct corporation.
Also consider the nearly intractable problems of trying to get that "one neighbourhood" to agree to be chosen.
Ah yes! The origin of NIMBY and the reason why people get so upset with zoning changes. It's also why property values are cheaper next to a factory than they are next to a forest.
There's no way I can agree with 100 year copyrights! Just about the only people you can find supporting this are the noncreative heirs of deceased creative people.
Just to throw some numbers out, how about fifty years, or twenty five years after the creators death, whichever comes first.
I'll assume that you're saying that the vast majority of our current pollution is unavoidable.
That's not what I was saying. I was trying to get across the point that consuming causes pollution. The more people consume, whether it be food, electricity, gasoline, etc, the more they pollute. There's no way around it. Getting back to the cottager, let's say he has your wood burning stove and double glazed windows. He is now using his energy more efficiently. But somewhere a foundry and a glazier have made some pollution as well. There is less pollution compared to the cottager using a chimney and open windows, but what pollution now exists is concentrated.
I am of the mind that this is better because concentrated pollution is easier to control and manage than dispersed pollution. In the previous case, the cottager subjected his nieghbors to smoke and stench (and their thatched roofs to stray sparks), but in the latter the benefits of the consumption accrue to many neighborhoods, but only one actually gets the pollution.
The incentives for IP are not just for creation of new works, but also the commercial distribution of those works.
If there were no copyright laws, certainly all of the garage bands would still exist. But there is no incentive to distribute those works commercially. A record label isn't going to record a garage band and sell the CDs if it knows that the next label will copy off of them and sell theirs cheaper, and so on down the line. Eventually all the CDs will be sold for the cost of the media, leaving insufficient profits to make the recording to begin with.
But don't discount the incentive to create either. Most garage bands want to create music. But they also want to earn a living. Without copyrights, they would be unable to sell their music for a price sufficient to keep them employed as musicians. Most of them will end up in other professions, taking away from their time to compose new pieces, and away from their time to practice.
If only the hard core free market capitalist types would wake up and realize that open source is one of the closest approximations there is to a classic free market.
BTW, capitalists are not necessarily free marketers. And not all free marketers are capitalists. Those who are hard core free market types already know that open source is *one* of several classic free markets. They also know that it is not the only one.
The essence of free markets is voluntary interactions. If you can keep the open source community voluntary, we will have no problems.
Pollution is an unfortunate byproduct of consumption. Get rid of all industry and you'll still have the cottager burning wood on his stove.
Technology has a benefit in that it makes the consumption of energy more efficient. It also has the drawback the the lesser pollution created is also more concentrated. The nuclear power plant produces far, far less pollution than the equivalent in wood burning stoves, but that tiny bit of pollution is now concentrated in tiny lethal pellets.
Not polluting in the first place just isn't an option. But using the poplar trees to counteract the pollution is a great idea! I say shoot all those nuclear waste pellets into space on a trajectory intersecting the sun, the ring the launch facilities with forests.
It doesn't seem to make any definition of "modified Software" or derivative work...extension is not well defined either
It doesn't have to define "modify" or "derivative" as they are already defined under copyright law. If you only link to Qt, then at most your code is an extension. But the only way you can be derived from Qt is to take parts of their actual code and modify them. The latter is what clause 3 refers to.
But I assume you want to modify Qt itself...
This also clearly means that the initial developer has the right to distribute your free modifications under their proprietary license
That is true, but they also have the obligation to keep it in their free version as well. In short, they cannot close source it. The only way they can use it as proprietary code is to simultaneously issue it as open source code.
I've been thinking this over since yesterday, and there is still a problem with your scenario. The problem is copyright law. It doesn't matter what the any license says, it can't give any rights to the copyright holder that he or she did not already possess. The rights of party "A" do not transfer to party "B" just because party "C" combined their two code bases into one. In such a case, Troll could incorporate all of your modifications, including the third party stuff, into their free version of Qt, but they couldn't put any of the third party stuff into their professional version. That section of their license would be voided for that section of code.
At the worst, you would be disallowed from combining the two. But in that case it's a very simple matter of making a distinct library that links to the original Qt and QPLd athena widgets.
I don't think the original poster was objecting to them eating, merely to their use of proprietory licensing.
Then he should have stuck to that objection, instead of bringing food into it:-)
Seriously, it is unrealistic to expect commercial developers to give up their jobs and become waiters as suggested by RMS. But we are not talking about developers here, we are talking about the companies that employ developers. Before these companies can pay their employees, they need revenue. If Troll Tech open sourced their professional version, they would end up with ZERO revenue, and be forced to lay off their employees. If they can get complementary products to support Qt with in the future, then that may be an option at that time. But it is not an option now.
Qt is not the type of product that you can shrink wrap, put on store shelves, and hope enough users buy it to subsidize those that download it instead. And it's unrealistic to expect them to convert to a support company, particularly since their customers are in the profession least likely to need support.
The unfortunate fact is that Troll Tech has only one product. They don't sell other proprietary software like Redhat does. They don't sell hardware like VA Linux. All they have is Qt, and if they don't sell it they have to lay off their employees.
Their current situation is in my mind nearly ideal. The software is free if you write free software, but it's proprietary if you write proprietary software (I only wish that the Windows version were the same). But one who is of the opinion that all software must be free takes a strange stand by insisting that proprietary software get the benefit of a free library.
Clause 3c refers to the Software, ei. the Qt Widget Library. You would be correct if I incorporated a third party's QPLd code into my own version of Qt, but that was not your scenario at all. You were talking about linking an application to both the QPLd Qt and another QPLd code base. The Trolls get zero rights to any of your code that merely links to Qt (beyond the demand that you open source it).
They can't proprietarize your code unless it is a modification to their code.
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You obviously haven't spent very much time using proprietary Unices.
I'm using Solaris, FreeBSD and Slackware.
So, no offense, but at least based on my own experience, I'd have to say that the claim that GNU tools are all dependent on the GNU C library is complete bullshit.
I didn't say "GNU tools", I said "GNU software". Try compiling Gnome on FreeBSD without glibc. The older GNU software will compile just fine, but some of the new stuff is rubbish when it comes to portability.
BSD uses its own libc. The GNU libc is only needed to compile some GNU software, or running under Linux compatibility mode.
Remove all the GNU tools and libraries from a stock Linux system, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a single-user shell, let alone /sbin/init.
/sbin/init, let alone a boot.
Remove all the BSD code from a stock Linux system, including the much touted Debian GNU/Linux, and you'll be lucky if you can get as far as a
"You have missed a crucial philosophical point: For everyone to have "freedom", you as an individual must give up a little of your "freedom".
Freedom is the absense of restrictions, true. But you fail to fully comprehend what that means. Freedom is not that condition where anyone can do whatever they want. That is known as nihilism. Rather, it is that condition where anyone can do whatever they want, so long as they do not restrict others from doing the same. The common saying that "your freedom ends where my nose begins" fails to note that your striking my nose restricts my freedom.
Unfortunately, too many people get all muddled headed about software. Despite recent abuses to IP law, the fact remains that software is property. Freedom means that I can't restrict what you do with your code just as you can't restrict what I do with mine. When RMS talks about software freedoms, he is really referring to permissions. Certainly GPLd software gives out more permissions than the Microsoft EULA does, but that makes no difference to freedom one way or another. Closed source software is every bit as free as open source, in reference to to owners of the software. No one's rights or properties are being restricted by closed source software.
If you choose to open the code to everyone, you should be empowered to do that. If you choose to close the source, you should have just as much right to do so.
Bingo! Now you got it!
BSD style protect is still "free" but doesn't offer the right kind of "freedom".
Oops. You just lost it again. You need to get off of the notion that software licenses have anything to do with freedom. Saying that the BSDL doesn't have the "right kind of freedom" is just plain inflammatory.
"em>This [BSD] has the important implication that someday, the project may pull all of the code to close source"
Not at all! What hat did you pull this out of. Once you have given the users the permission to do whatever they want with your software, you can't take it back. No way, no how. Sure, future releases might be closed source, but there's no way that affects the present. Why is it that GPL advocates always fear a BSD author might possibly close their source up in the future, but they never worry about GPL authors doing the same?
You've hit the nail on the head. When RMS talks about "free" and "freedom", he is using a different definition than you or I. It's almost like he's using an orwellian GNUspeak. It is absolutely ridiculous to portray users of closed source software as being enslaved, dominated or subjugated, yet that is precisely how RMS portrays them.
I have heard on too numerous occasions, that one has to restrict freedom in order to protect it, and that's what the GPL is, restrictions on freedom to protect free software. They use spurious analogies like "if there were no restrictions to freedom, then people would be free to murder", or the classic "your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose", indicating that they have absolutely no clue what freedom is to begin with.
Open Source software has nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with defining property rights so that people can excercise the freedoms they already possess.
I should have clarified. They didn't change ls, grep, more or anything like that. But they did change libc. And they did take stuff and "tune" it for Linux. But the biggest contributors to the LinuxOS as an OS were the distributions. And they used software from a variety of sources, not just GNU. Take out the stuff from BSD and none of the Linux distros will work.
The point is, no one took an existing GNU System and dropped the Linux kernel inside. That's because there was no GNU System at that time.
What makes GNU tools the defacto standard when none of the other equivalents use their "extensions"? If they were the standard, the others would add those additional options.
Example, the GNU automake/autoconf generates makefiles that are only usable with gmake. Example, shell scripts from GNU are invariably designed for bash and not generic sh. Example, most GNU software requires the extensions in glibc, and will not work with any other C library. GNU could easily make their stuff work seamlessly with any Unix whatsoever, but they choose not to. Microsoft could learn quite a bit from the FSF when it comes to embrace and extend.
The BSD ls is not GNU ls. Nothing in their core userland is from GNU.
But what are you really saying? That the existance of GNU ls in Linux requires that the whole be called GNU/Linux? That's just stupid.
Even RMS has publically stated that mere use of the GNU tools, even using *all* of them, does not require an OS to be called GNU. His argument is different, in that he considers Redhat, SuSE, Slackware to *ACTUALLY BE* the GNU System. But his argument only makes sense if distributions took the existing GNU System and swapped out the unworking kernel with Linux. This is not what happened.
The GNU tools are included with every *BSD as well. Should we now be saying GNU/FreeBSD?
From the article: The result, although commonly referred to as "Linux," is the GNU System
When is RMS going to shrug off this delusion of his? It was Linus and Company that fixed the GNU software to run under Linux, not the other way around. It's pretty arrogant to incorporate Linus' fixes into GNU then demand that Linux be called GNU as a result.
Take all the non-GNU stuff out of Redhat, SuSE or Debian, but keep the kernel, and see if it will even boot, let alone be usable.
Linux does not require the vast majority of GNU software. 95% of userland can be cleanly replaced by non-GNU alternatives. In fact, the only things required from GNU are glibc and gcc. It's pretty uppity to require users of a compiler and library to call their results GNU.
Uh, with the exception of grep, those aren't unix tools, they are GNU tools. And GNU's Not Unix :-) And Cygwin ain't a unix tool under any definition.
sh and csh *are* unix tools because one can count on them being installed by default on every unix. Ditto for vi.
Socialist: One who advocates the state ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. This has nothing to do with individual freedoms, and is in most cases antagonistic to them.
Information, including websites, are still economic products. To advocate that the state be in charge of them is to advocate against individual webmasters being in charge of their own creations.
So long as the individual can be allied with in the fight against capitalism, the socialist will proclaim his love for individual freedoms. But once the capitalist enemy is no more, their designs inevitably turn towards those not of the collective mind.
No, Qt 2.x is not backwardly compatible to 1.x. But they have managed to achieve a level of backwards compatibility that is still very good. All of the 2.x releases will work together. The 2.1 beta is out and it works just fine with 2.0. No recompiles necessary.
Compare this to the Windows world where every program comes with yet another copy of the MFC, VB or DX runtimes because the compatibility gets lost from month to month.
When I'm in hackermode, I use elvis 'cause it doesn't try to shove ideology down my throat. But ocassionally there comes the time when I need to massive, bloated and overloaded monstrosity to edit a memo and do my dishes simultaneously. When that time comes I don't use emacs. Instead I turn to XEmacs! Just a big, but copyrighted by a defunct corporation.
Also consider the nearly intractable problems of trying to get that "one neighbourhood" to agree to be chosen.
Ah yes! The origin of NIMBY and the reason why people get so upset with zoning changes. It's also why property values are cheaper next to a factory than they are next to a forest.
There's no way I can agree with 100 year copyrights! Just about the only people you can find supporting this are the noncreative heirs of deceased creative people.
Just to throw some numbers out, how about fifty years, or twenty five years after the creators death, whichever comes first.
I'll assume that you're saying that the vast majority of our current pollution is unavoidable.
That's not what I was saying. I was trying to get across the point that consuming causes pollution. The more people consume, whether it be food, electricity, gasoline, etc, the more they pollute. There's no way around it. Getting back to the cottager, let's say he has your wood burning stove and double glazed windows. He is now using his energy more efficiently. But somewhere a foundry and a glazier have made some pollution as well. There is less pollution compared to the cottager using a chimney and open windows, but what pollution now exists is concentrated.
I am of the mind that this is better because concentrated pollution is easier to control and manage than dispersed pollution. In the previous case, the cottager subjected his nieghbors to smoke and stench (and their thatched roofs to stray sparks), but in the latter the benefits of the consumption accrue to many neighborhoods, but only one actually gets the pollution.
The incentives for IP are not just for creation of new works, but also the commercial distribution of those works.
If there were no copyright laws, certainly all of the garage bands would still exist. But there is no incentive to distribute those works commercially. A record label isn't going to record a garage band and sell the CDs if it knows that the next label will copy off of them and sell theirs cheaper, and so on down the line. Eventually all the CDs will be sold for the cost of the media, leaving insufficient profits to make the recording to begin with.
But don't discount the incentive to create either. Most garage bands want to create music. But they also want to earn a living. Without copyrights, they would be unable to sell their music for a price sufficient to keep them employed as musicians. Most of them will end up in other professions, taking away from their time to compose new pieces, and away from their time to practice.
If only the hard core free market capitalist types would wake up and realize that open source is one of the closest approximations there is to a classic free market.
BTW, capitalists are not necessarily free marketers. And not all free marketers are capitalists. Those who are hard core free market types already know that open source is *one* of several classic free markets. They also know that it is not the only one.
The essence of free markets is voluntary interactions. If you can keep the open source community voluntary, we will have no problems.
Pollution is an unfortunate byproduct of consumption. Get rid of all industry and you'll still have the cottager burning wood on his stove.
Technology has a benefit in that it makes the consumption of energy more efficient. It also has the drawback the the lesser pollution created is also more concentrated. The nuclear power plant produces far, far less pollution than the equivalent in wood burning stoves, but that tiny bit of pollution is now concentrated in tiny lethal pellets.
Not polluting in the first place just isn't an option. But using the poplar trees to counteract the pollution is a great idea! I say shoot all those nuclear waste pellets into space on a trajectory intersecting the sun, the ring the launch facilities with forests.
I asked VA Linux why they don't give their hardware systems away. They replied "we have to eat somehow."
But that's not a true statement. Their employees may lose their jobs and the company may fold, but they can always get other jobs.
It doesn't seem to make any definition of "modified Software" or derivative work...extension is not well defined either
It doesn't have to define "modify" or "derivative" as they are already defined under copyright law. If you only link to Qt, then at most your code is an extension. But the only way you can be derived from Qt is to take parts of their actual code and modify them. The latter is what clause 3 refers to.
But I assume you want to modify Qt itself...
This also clearly means that the initial developer has the right to distribute your free modifications under their proprietary license
That is true, but they also have the obligation to keep it in their free version as well. In short, they cannot close source it. The only way they can use it as proprietary code is to simultaneously issue it as open source code.
I've been thinking this over since yesterday, and there is still a problem with your scenario. The problem is copyright law. It doesn't matter what the any license says, it can't give any rights to the copyright holder that he or she did not already possess. The rights of party "A" do not transfer to party "B" just because party "C" combined their two code bases into one. In such a case, Troll could incorporate all of your modifications, including the third party stuff, into their free version of Qt, but they couldn't put any of the third party stuff into their professional version. That section of their license would be voided for that section of code.
At the worst, you would be disallowed from combining the two. But in that case it's a very simple matter of making a distinct library that links to the original Qt and QPLd athena widgets.
I don't think the original poster was objecting to them eating, merely to their use of proprietory licensing.
:-)
Then he should have stuck to that objection, instead of bringing food into it
Seriously, it is unrealistic to expect commercial developers to give up their jobs and become waiters as suggested by RMS. But we are not talking about developers here, we are talking about the companies that employ developers. Before these companies can pay their employees, they need revenue. If Troll Tech open sourced their professional version, they would end up with ZERO revenue, and be forced to lay off their employees. If they can get complementary products to support Qt with in the future, then that may be an option at that time. But it is not an option now.
Qt is not the type of product that you can shrink wrap, put on store shelves, and hope enough users buy it to subsidize those that download it instead. And it's unrealistic to expect them to convert to a support company, particularly since their customers are in the profession least likely to need support.
The unfortunate fact is that Troll Tech has only one product. They don't sell other proprietary software like Redhat does. They don't sell hardware like VA Linux. All they have is Qt, and if they don't sell it they have to lay off their employees.
Their current situation is in my mind nearly ideal. The software is free if you write free software, but it's proprietary if you write proprietary software (I only wish that the Windows version were the same). But one who is of the opinion that all software must be free takes a strange stand by insisting that proprietary software get the benefit of a free library.
Clause 3c refers to the Software, ei. the Qt Widget Library. You would be correct if I incorporated a third party's QPLd code into my own version of Qt, but that was not your scenario at all. You were talking about linking an application to both the QPLd Qt and another QPLd code base. The Trolls get zero rights to any of your code that merely links to Qt (beyond the demand that you open source it).
They can't proprietarize your code unless it is a modification to their code.